Student Experiences in First Year Engineering Classrooms - Exploring Issues of Gender in an Australian Program
Access Status
Authors
Date
2017Type
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Source Title
ISSN
School
Collection
Abstract
The 2016 cohort of first year engineering undergraduates, arranged in groups of about 20, consisted of eight groups with at least one-third females, five groups with one or two females and sixteen male-only groups. The groups had a common timetable for all lectures, workshops, tutorials and laboratories for eight core units. The hypothesis was groups with a higher proportion of females would enable female students to self-select small groups of gender parity or majority for teamwork activities in classrooms. Furthermore, these small groups would be microenvironments supportive of female verbal participation and engagement whilst minimising discrimination. Qualitative and quantitative data collection from classroom observations preceded quantitative data collection using a survey instrument and student and learning analytics data. Whilst acknowledging the limitations of the research and complexity of interacting factors, including those from pre-university that were outside the scope of the research, the strategy of group allocation piloted in 2016 did create microenvironments of gender parity or majority. Classroom observations indicate female students engaged. Further research to investigate the disparity of threat to challenge ratios reported by male and female students is recommended.
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Ogbuehi, Philip Ikechukwu (2006)This study, which was conducted among middle-school students in California, focused on the effectiveness of using innovative strategies for enhancing the classroom environment, students' attitudes, and conceptual development. ...
-
Investigating the effectiveness of mathematics games on students' attitudes and learning environmentAfari, Ernest (2012)The primary focus of the present study was an evaluation of the effectiveness of games when used in college-level mathematics classes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A mixed-method approach involved surveys, interviews, ...
-
Lightburn, Millard E. (2002)The study involved the evaluation of anthropometric activities for high school science. The activities actively engaged students in the process of gathering, processing and analyzing data derived from human body measurements, ...